Issue - meetings

This report presents the findings of the MedPay review, sets out a proposes reorganization of the legal services to better aid retention, succession planning, training and consistent quality of advice, and the challenges presented to meet the resource gap due to a significant increase in demand by Children’s Services.

This would require an addition to the revenue budget for Legal Services of £656,887, however this would represent a reduction on the projected cost to Medway of operating the service in the current model in 2023/24 which is forecasting an overspend in excess of £1 million.

Background:

The report set out the findings of a review of MedPay, the Council’s staff appraisal scheme. It proposed a reorganisation of legal services to better aid retention, succession planning, training and consistent quality of advice, and the challenges presented to meet the resource gap due to a significant increase in demand by Children’s Services.

This report stated that this would require an addition to the revenue budget for Legal Services of £656,887, however, this would represent a reduction on the projected cost to Medway of operating the service in the current model in 2023/24, which was forecasting an overspend in excess of £1 million.

The report had previously been considered by the Cabinet on 8 August 2023, the decisions of which were set out at section 9 of the report.

The Portfolio Holder for Business Management, Councillor Van Dyke, supported by Councillor Hamilton, proposed the recommendations set out in the report.

Decision:

The Council agreed the changes to the Legal Services’ 2024/25 revenue budget, as set out in paragraph 14.4 of the report.

Background:

This report set the findings of the MedPay review and proposed a reorganisation of Legal Services, which would better aid retention, succession planning, training and consistent quality of advice, and overcome the challenges to meet the resource gap due to a significant increase in demand by Children’s Services.

The report set out that the inhouse local government legal market had been challenging for many years, with external locum opportunities making staff retention a challenge. The position had been further exacerbated at Medway following the Council’s decision to move away from national terms and conditions and the implementation of MedPay, with the reward offer at Medway having fallen behind many directly comparable organisations. A changed approach was needed to avoid incurring increasingly higher costs for agency staff.

The proposals, which included implementing the recommendations of the MedPay review in Legal Services, restructuring of teams and an increase to the establishment by a further 5 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) posts, would require an addition to the revenue budget for Legal Services of £656,887. This would represent a reduction on the projected cost to Medway of operating the service in the current model in 2023/24, which was forecasting an overspend in excess of £1 million.

Reasons:

The increase to the Legal Services budget would enable the implementation of the outcome of the MedPay Review, create a more sustainable structure and meet additional demand from clients.